Police have arrested a woman on suspicion of butchering a cat for food after its bloodstained carcass was found at a Hong Kong public housing flat on Wednesday.

Officers were called to the seventh floor of Kin Tin House at Pak Tin Estate in Shek Kip Mei after receiving a report from a tenant soon after 9.45am. A police spokesman said: -

“The resident saw a woman carrying an unknown sharp object and a cat carcass and then reported the case.”

Investigators believed she had picked up the carcass in the district and brought it home, the spokesman added.

Officers found the 58-year-old woman involved in a seventh-floor flat. She initially refused to open the door and officers could only enter the flat to investigate after she later granted them entry.

“In the flat, police found a dead cat and a knife in a bucket of water outside the bathroom,” a source familiar with the case said, adding no obvious injuries were found on the animal.

Police said the knife was 32cm long.

The woman lived alone and claimed to have suffered from mental illness for about 20 years, the source said.

Police said the woman was detained on suspicion of slaughtering a cat for food, an offence which is punishable by up to six months in jail and a HK$5,000 (US$637) fine.

Detectives from the Sham Shui Po criminal investigation unit are following up on the case.

Last month, authorities discovered a shop in Yau Ma Tei was selling cat meat after they found DNA traces in samples seized from the premises.

A raid on the premises followed an investigation by local media, which found an account on mainland Chinese messaging app WeChat offering to send cat and dog meat and other products directly from Kaiping in Guangdong province to Hong Kong, where a shop on Reclamation Street sold such items.

Main Source: SCMP